Going Through The Motions
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: They can be made to participate in the Tournament, but not to treat it seriously. (Crackfic. Oneshot.)


**Author's Note** : Yet another take on derailing the Triwizard Tournament.

#####

"Look, I've called you all together to point out this Tournament is a farce," Harry said to the other three Champions. "Either you believe somebody else entered me, in which case there's an unknown party on the loose and nobody detected them, or you believe the security measures were so pathetic a fourteen-year-old could waltz past them. Either way, security is a joke and anyone could tamper with the Tournament. There's nothing stopping anyone from putting one of you under the Imperius and having you deliberately fail a Task-"

"But, Harry, that's illegal," Cedric protested. Fleur tossed her hair, looking equally unimpressed by him and by Harry.

"Besides wheech, we would certainly report eet afterwards."

"Not if they had you fail it by strolling into a pit of acid," Harry pointed out, and suddenly Fleur looked much less certain of herself.

"Vot is your point, Potter?" Krum grunted.

"The way I see it, the only way around it is to declare this Tournament invalid and act like it." Harry held up a finger as Cedric opened his mouth. "I understand we're all bound to compete. Well, we'll abide by the letter but not the spirit. Collaborate on the Tasks. If we cheat, share the method and declare it to the spectators. If we get a riddle, work together to solve it. If we're matched against each other, openly flip a Galleon to decide who wins any match-up and throw the match accordingly. Make it clear we're all working together as a protest against the organizers who failed us all. That way, if anyone tries to tilt the Tournament towards one Champion or another, it will be pointless because we've already refused to accept the outcome as valid."

"Vill history care?" Krum said dubiously.

"If we make a big enough fuss about it, sure," Harry said with a shrug. "Do you remember what school 'won' the year that raging cockatrice got the Tournament canceled? Because I certainly don't."

The three older Champions looked at each other.

"And what eef you defect from zees arrangement at ze last moment?" Fleur asked. "What zen?"

"Vell, then, ve Imperius him to stroll into pool of acid," Krum said gravely.

There was a pause.

"Is joke."

###

The Champions confessed at the start of the First Task that they all knew the nature of the Task beforehand and had prepared accordingly to trivialize the Task. Their scheme soon panned out, much to the crowd's disappointment.

However, the boos turned to cheers as an entirely different show of magical power and brilliance replaced the original Task: the judges, freshly soaked in dragon pheromone, were forced to fend off the amorous advances of four fervent females in quick succession. So preoccupied were both they and the crowd, albeit for entirely different reasons, that no one even noticed the Champions casually confiscating the golden eggs from the unattended nests.

Never before in the history of the Tournament had all of the Champions received negative scores.

###

Though the Champions again announced their collaboration and railed against the organizers at the start of the Second Task, no one was doused with giant-squid pheromones. Hope blossoming in their hearts, the judges proclaimed the start of the Task, and...

The Champions did not move.

"Ah, you do understand the Task?" Headmaster Dumbledore ventured as the four stood at the edge of the lake, seeming not to have a care in the world. Mr. Diggory was even fiddling with his watch.

"Ve understand you haff not the brains to care for a dog, much less the 'vuns ve'd miss the most'," Mr. Krum said gruffly.

"So we made alternative arrangements," Mr. Potter said, and nodded to Mr. Diggory.

"Before the Task, we presented our loved ones with inconspicuous accessories, which were actually time-activated Portkeys-"

"-zat are due - just now," Ms. Delacour concluded as a sodden heap of hostages deposited themselves before the judges' table.

###

The Third Task went awry when Krum, instead of finding and joining the others as agreed, ambushed Fleur. Harry and Cedric, however, recognized that Krum had not developed a sudden interest in a post-Tournament acid bath, as did Fleur once the initial shock of the Cruciatus wore off.

Three paranoid and angry Champions (and one bound-and-gagged Champion) arrived in the Little Hangleton graveyard and responded to the first sign of threat accordingly. By the time their volley of curses stopped, Peter Pettigrew made for more of an interesting case study for specialists in severe spell damage than a functional wizard, and his ward and master little better after being hit by several stray spells.

The organizers received an unpleasant shock when, instead of returning via the Cup, the disgruntled Champions elected to Apparate to London, turn in their would-be assailants to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and file charges against the organizers for criminal neglect of their duties and reckless endangerment. While they ordinarily might have been laughed off, since the Triwizard Tournament had never cared for little things like safety, officials spooked by the Dark Mark on the unidentified man's arm, to say nothing of the disturbingly familiar appearance of the malformed infant creature, seized upon the excuse to raid Hogwarts for answers.

The Auror sweep of the school would find a supposedly-dead Death Eater impersonating Alastor Moody, a nest of Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest, and a cache of Dark artifacts in the so-called Room of Hidden Things - one of which provoked such extreme alarm when properly analyzed that Aurors were stationed at the school full-time until the end of term. It was publicly given out that the artifact was the anchor for the long-suspected curse on the Defense position, which was technically true. Any who might have suspected otherwise found their attention fixed on another scandal:

The "ground-breaking reverse-engineering" of the Dark Marks held by the two freshly-captured Death Eaters (in reality, the spite-filled analysis obtained from the Mark's own creator) that revealed that, in order for the Mark to properly bind to its target, the recipient had to freely and willingly give themselves to the Dark Lord's service.

The repercussions of _that_ in Wizarding Britain overshadowed any controversy that might arise from a measly little Tournament...


End file.
